TV Audience Measurement Advisory Committee holds inaugural meeting
View(s):Sri Lanka recently witnessed the inauguration of the Television Audience Measurement Advisory Committee (TAMAC), a local group comprising marketers, advertising and media buying agencies and TV networks tasked with marketing research best practices. TAMAC was brought together by the Lanka Market Research Bureau (LMRB), the developer of the “RapidMeter” TV audience measurement system.
According to the LMRB announcement; “The role of TAMAC would be to ensure adherence to international best practice in sample design, selection and recruitment, response rates, data processing, ratings calculations and the elimination of third party interference. TAMAC would also act as a forum for addressing user concerns”.
Further, LMRB also indicated that “with the growing complexities in TV Audience Measurement the need for delivering trust, confidence and integrity with the data becomes critical. Therefore the highest ethical and professional standards have to be followed when running a system such as the RapidMeter, for measuring TV audiences in a country”.
The announcement also stated that the inaugural TAMAC membership comprised “Ravindra De Coonghe (Marketing Director-GlaxoSmithKline), Peter Solomon (Director Media Planning – Grants), Sabry Haniz (Chief Operating Officer – GroupM), Upali Ranjith (Director General Marketing – ITN), Prashanth Subramanium (Director – Media Factory), Radhini de Costa (Assistant Vice President Marketing Services – Nestle), Lalith Sumanasiri (Managing Director- Ogilvy Media, Neo@Ogilvy) and Siddharth Banerjee (Country Marketing Director – Unilever)”.
Meanwhile, the local market research agency also put forward its view that the “ratings provider supplied viewership data along with the software necessary for its analysis, leaving users free to analyse the data and arrive at various results, whether it be a channel ranking or anything else.
It is therefore clear that the TV audience measurement system does not produce one and only one rating. Rather, each report contains millions of numbers, organised by demographic groups, TV channels, TV programmes and time periods. Each of the ratings obtained from the data has its own margin of error because of its unique characteristics”.
Additionally, it also opined that a “rise or drop in viewership for a programme need not necessarily mean that TV viewers have suddenly started liking or disliking content. Analysing TV viewing behaviour is more complex.
There are many factors at play. Environmental factors like political events, adverse weather conditions such as lightning, power cuts, competitive programmes, effect of promotions, special events like cricket etc. all contribute to behavioural (and therefore) data changes. These must be studied carefully before reaching any conclusions”. (JH)